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Show 5 Excellent $5.50 first-run ticket price. This is the type of movie viewers prefer Hollywood to make, and moviegoers movie-goers should reward film-makers by paying full admission admis-sion price. xArahnophobia' built on pood actina By KURT A. HILLS If you saw "Jaws," you remember re-member what Richard Dreyfus s said in the face of the giant man-eating man-eating shark 'Bigger boat. We need a bigger boat." If Dreyfuss had been in "Arachnophobia," his line might have been, "More Raid. We need more Raid. ' Unfortunately, even industrial-strength, industrial-strength, radioactive Raid wouldn't stop the eight-legged beasties in this terrifically tense movie. "Arachnophobia" contains innumerable in-numerable nasty spiders of a relatively common size, whose venom kills a human in less than a minute. The movie has a spider web the size of a Dusenberg, filled with the large leftovers of several hearty arachnid meals. It has a scary bam, an over-the-top exterminator, an arachnophobic physician, a British spider expert, a small-town sheriff with a severely repressive attitude, a cheerful mortician, and Big Bob, a tarantula the size of a catcher's mitt. Big Bob, played by himself in an inspired casting choice, hitches a ride to California in the spider expert's ex-pert's "luggage" when the expert (Julian Sands) returns from a Venezuelan bug safari. The large spider quickly finds a girlfriend. They hatch a brood in record time, and the hairy and aggressive ag-gressive children kill several townspeople before they are discovered. The new town doctor (Jeff Daniels) is terrified of spiders because of a childhood trauma, and I when he learns what is killing his patients he immediately calls a spider expert who coincidental ly is our British friend from Venezuela. It is up to the young doctor, the spider expert and "toxic exterminator" exter-minator" (John Goodman) to find Big Bob before he finds them. Some comments heard during the movie (from the young girls huddled hud-dled into the row behind me) sum-marize sum-marize the mood of "Arachnophobia": "Why did I ever let you talk me into this? I can't take this movie. Oh, look out! (gasp, squeal)" After the movie, however, the comments were more like, "That was great. Gross spiders, but great ' I concur. "Arachnophobia" is a good, scary movie, and the best part may be the atmosphere. When I saw it, the ushers and other theater employees had huge fake spiders pinned to their shirts, and there were enormous webs suspended from the ceiling of the lobby. There is no gore galore, nor do you have to worry about spiders wearing tiny hockey masks or carrying car-rying tiny chain saws. The South American scenery is breathtaking and the performances are excellent, including the spiders who never appear mechanical. Of course, "Arachnophobia" is not a thriller in the same vein as "Psycho." It is billed as a "thrill-omedy," "thrill-omedy," and there are lots of laughs. However, it is tense! This is a highly recommended movie. However, ask yourself; do you really want to see this many spiders in one place? r |